Paul Bowles

In Let It Come Down, Paul Bowles plots the doomed trajectory of Nelson Dyar, a New York bank teller who comes to Tangier in search of a different life and ends up giving in to his darkest impulses. Rich in descriptions of the corruption and decadence of the International Zone in the last days before Moroccan independence, Bowles's second novel is an alternately comic and horrific account of a descent into nihilism.

A Novel

Let It Come Down

Mohamed Choukri

Choukri's book has become a classic of world literature.

For Bread Alone

The short fiction of American literary cult figure Paul Bowles is marked by a unique, delicately spare style, and a dark, rich, exotic mood, by turns chilling, ironic, and wry—possessing a symmetry between beauty and terror that is haunting and ultimately moral. In "Pastor Dowe at TecatÉ," a Protestant missionary is sent to a faraway place where his God has no power. In "Call at CorazÓn," an American husband abandons his alcoholic wife on their honeymoon in a South American jungle. In "Allal," a boy's drug-induced metamorphosis into a deadly serpent leads to his violent death. Here also are some of Bowles's most famous works, including "The Delicate Prey," a grimly satisfying tale of vengeance, and "A Distant Episode," which Tennessee Williams proclaimed "a masterpiece."

The Stories of Paul Bowles

Set in Fez, Morocco, during that country's 1954 nationalist uprising, The Spider's House is perhaps Paul Bowles's most beautifully subtle novel, richly descriptive of its setting and uncompromising in its characterizations. Exploring once again the dilemma of the outsider in an alien society, and the gap in understanding between cultures—recurrent themes of Paul Bowles's writings—The Spider's House is dramatic, brutally honest, and shockingly relevant to today's political situation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Spider's House

Exemplary storles that reveal the blzarre, the dlsturblng, the perllous, and the wlse ln other clvlllzatlons -- from one of Amerlca's most lmportant wrlters of the twentleth century.

And Other Stories

Delicate Prey

Tea on the mountain--The scorpion--By the water--A distant episode--The echo-Call at Corazon--Under the sky--Pages from Cold Point--(etc.).

Collected Stories, 1939-1976

A Distant Episode contains the best of Paul Bowles's short stories, as selected by the author. An American cult figure, Bowles has fascinated such disparate talents as Norman Mailer, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, William S. Burroughs, Gore Vidal, and Jay McInerney.

The Selected Stories

A Distant Episode

On the terrace of an elaborate hilltop apartment overlooking a Central American capital, four people sit making polite conversation. The American couple -- an elderly physician and his young wife -- are tourists. Their host, whom they have just met, is a young man of striking good looks and charm. The girl, his mistress, is very young and very beautiful. Sitting there, watching the sunset, the Slades seem to be enjoying the sort of fortunate chance encounter that travelers cherish. But amid the civilities and small talk, the host's casual remark to the American woman proves prophetic: "It's not exactly what you think." Masterfully -- with the poetic control that has always characterized his work -- Paul Bowles leads the reader beneath the surface of hospitality and luxury into a tortuous maze of human relationships and shifting moods, until what seems at first a merely casual encounter is seen to be one rooted in viciousness and horror.

Up Above the World

Collects the author's short stories, a novella titled "Up Above the World," and a travel book first published in 1963.

Delicate Prey / Hundred Camels in Courtyard / Time of Friendship / Things Gone & Things Still Here / Midnight Mass / Their Heads Are Green & Their Hands Are Blu

Paul Bowles: Collected Stories & Later Writings (LOA #135)

Their Heads are Green and their Hands are Blue is an engaging collection of eight travel essays. Except for one essay on Central America, all of these pieces are concerned with locations in the Hindu, Buddhist, or Islamic worlds. A superb and observant traveler, Paul Bowles was a born wanderer who found pleasure in the inaccessible and who cheerfully endures the concomitant hardships with a matter-of-fact humor. These essays provide us with Paul Bowles' characteristic insightfulness and bring us closer to a world we frequently hear about, but often find difficult to understand.

Scenes from the Non-Christian World

Their Heads Are Green and Their Hands Are Blue

Jane Bowles

This is the definitive edition of Jane Bowles' stories, with a biographical note and photos. Jane Bowles wrote very little: just one perfect novel, Two Serious Ladies , a play, In the Summer House , and the dozen or so stories collected in this volume. But it was enough to establish a reputation as one of the twentieth century's most original fiction writers. From the title story where an American woman is led to a house in 'blue moslem town' by a veiled woman with porcupines in her basket, to Camp Cataract, a Colorado-based tour de force of middle-class claustrophobia and dread, Everything is Nice takes you into an edgy and exhilarating, tragicomic world.

Collected Stories, Sketches and Plays

Everything is Nice

Il tè nel deserto

A beautiful 65th anniversary paperback edition of the landmark literary work by acclaimed author Paul Bowles. In this classic work of psychological terror, Paul Bowles examines the ways in which Americans apprehend an alien culture—and the ways in which their incomprehension destroys them. The story of three American travelers adrift in the cities and deserts of North Africa after World War II, The Sheltering Sky is at once merciless and heartbreaking in its compassion. It etches the limits of human reason and intelligence—perhaps even the limits of human life—when they touch the unfathomable emptiness and impassive cruelty of the desert.

Sheltering Sky

Points in Time

Up above the World

Yagsin Yagmur

Esirgeyen Gökyüzü

Esirgeyen gökyüzü

In this intense and brilliant book Bowles focuses on Morocco, condensing expreience, emotion, and the whole history of a people into a series of short, insightful vignettes. He distills for us the very essence of Moroccan culture. With extraordinary immediacy, he takes the reader on a journey through the Moroccan centuries, pausing at points along the way to create resonant images of the country, it's landscapes, and the beliefs and characteristics of its inhabitants.

Paul Bowles

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